


The Nerds and Assassins Knitting Guild

by femmenerd



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Knitting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmenerd/pseuds/femmenerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Winter Soldier. Teen for now, but will go up to M/E in future chapters.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>The first thing Steve notices about Darcy Lewis is her luscious figure; the second is her ubiquitous knitting paraphernalia. And since he's not about to use the former topic as a conversation starter with a woman he's only recently met—even if she weren't “under the protection” of a Norse god—then knitting it is.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nerds and Assassins Knitting Guild

 

The first thing Steve notices about Darcy Lewis is her luscious figure; the second is her ubiquitous knitting paraphernalia. And since he's not about to use the former topic as a conversation starter with a woman he's only recently met—even if she _weren't_ “under the protection” of a Norse god—then knitting it is.

 

(Luckily, Steve's significantly better versed in the ins & outs of needlecraft than, er, female physiology, anyway.)

 

“Is that double knitting?” Steve asks as he gingerly sits down on the opposite end of the comfiest couch in the homiest room on the Avengers floor of Stark Tower.

 

“Hmmm, what?” Darcy looks startled when her head bobs up in response, her big blue peepers aimed in the general vicinity of Steve's face as her glasses slide down her nose. Steve hadn't noticed before that she's got blue eyes, which suddenly feels like a crucial oversight on his part, even as a more logical, self-critical version of Steve's internal voice points out that there's really no reason he needed to register this fact, and moreover, _lots_ of people have blue eyes, _Steve_ has blue eyes, so what?

 

He coughs mildly and gestures toward the complicated and colorful yarn extravaganza now resting in her lap. It looks like it's on its way to being a scarf made up of reversible squares representing miscellaneous Avengers. So far she's got a silver hammer against a blue background for Thor, a black on purple bow & arrow motif for Clint, and a red symbol shaped kind of like an hourglass for...somebody? Maybe Natasha. Realizing he's staring intently at Darcy's crotch, covered up as it is by denim and wool, Steve checks himself and tries again.

 

“That technique – it's called 'double knitting,' right?”

 

Darcy glances down at her work-in-progress briefly before bestowing upon Steve a smile that is blazing, blinding, her lips plump and deliciously unrestrained as they spread wide to reveal a slightly gap-toothed but decidedly sexy set of chompers. Has Steve ever found _teeth_ sexy before? Is that perverse? He decides he doesn't care as a not-unpleasant warmth ping pongs through his body.

 

“Why Captain, I thought you'd never ask” is Darcy's saucily smug and mysterious non-answer to his question. Her voice is breathy and over-the-top seductive until she dissolves into giggles punctuated by a ladylike snort, and Steve can't tell if he's more turned on by the pseudo sex-pot theatrics or her ability to revel in being ridiculous.

 

“Excuse me?” Steve prompts, hoping he's projecting his genuine confusion rather than offended stuffiness. He _likes_ her friendly cheekiness, and having watched her banter with the others in the weeks since the arrival of Thor, Dr. Foster  & company has made him anxiously hopeful about when it'll be his turn.

 

Then Darcy does something unexpected: she _blushes_. Not just contained apple-splotches on her cheeks either—she flushes pink down to her collarbones (and possibly lower, but stingily, that's all her scoop-necked t-shirt reveals). Without his conscious volition, Steve finds himself traveling a cushion closer to her end of the couch. Darcy doesn't seem to mind. She just giggle-snorts again, and holds her knitting up proudly.

 

“I've been flagrantly working on this in your presence,” she confesses with an emphatic toss of her hair. Steve wants to touch it, but refrains.

 

“I see.” Steve really doesn't see, but figures she'll get to the point some time or other. Whenever is fine by him.

 

Darcy sighs dramatically and rolls her eyes, but Steve doesn't feel mocked. That's another thing he's noticed about her – how she seems to have the ability to be sarcastic without being unkind. So he smiles and waits, absently fingering the fabric emerging from her knitting needles in lieu of the loose and loopy dark waves framing her face.

 

“Okay!” Darcy announces, stilling Steve's yarn-fondling fingers. “It's like this. I have that 'Knit for Defense' poster you posed for back in the day—you know, the one where you're making a sock while all gussied up in the whole star-spangled shebang–I got it off ebay before you'd even been defrosted!—and I couldn't help noticing that your hands were actually properly positioned, unlike most of the time when you see people allegedly knitting on TV or whatever...”

 

Darcy pauses the the rapid stream of words tumbling out her mouth to scowl adorably, and Steve feels his smile bloom into a grin, but doesn't interrupt.

 

“Anyway! It looked like _maybe_ you actually know how to knit for real, and I thought _maybe_ I'd coax it out of you subtly, but the thing is, I'm not really subtle. Like, at all. So now I'm just asking: Steve Rogers, do you know how to knit?”

 

“Maybe.” The word just falls out of his mouth.

 

Darcy pulls the scarf-in-progress away from him in punishment, so Steve quickly amends, “Yes.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Yes, I know how to knit,” Steve explicates. It's possible his body has been possessed by a far sassier version of himself: a Steve who knows how to flirt. Like a schoolboy, but it's something.

 

Darcy squints and huffs. “That's all you've got to say?”

 

“No.”

 

It takes all of Steve's concentration to keep his face blank and resist cracking up as Darcy sputters and glares. He doesn't know what's come over him, but he's enjoying teasing her. But after a minute or two of a staring competition that she'll never ever win, Steve takes mercy and relents.

 

“What do you wanna know?” he offers, slipping into gentleman mode for a moment before slipping out to add, “You want me to prove it to ya?” She's bringing out the Brooklyn in him, it seems.

 

“YES! Oh my god, are you kidding me?” Darcy proceeds to actually hop up and down with enthusiasm. Steve feels his insides fizz in kind.

 

“Well, I can't do anything as fancy as what you've got going there, but I can knit and purl with the best of 'em. Might be kinda rusty though, and I haven't really knit much since the Serum, so...” Steve trails off, palming the back of his neck.

 

“Auuugh. Cap, you're killing me here.” She's flopped backwards over the arm of the couch, hands hiding her face.

 

“Are—are you okay, Ms. Lewis?” He's already thinking of her as “Darcy” in his head, but some habits die hard. And he's pretty sure she's just playing, but just in case.

 

Of course, before the solicitous words are all the way out of his mouth, she rights herself and replies, “It's Darcy, and I think so. Maybe. Could you say that bit about 'purling with the best of them' again though. Please? For my ovaries.”

 

Then it's Steve's turn to blush, but he complies, dredging up his best stage voice to repeat brightly, “I'm Steve Rogers, and I can knit and purl with the best of 'em!”

 

Darcy doubles over with laughter, and Steve feels like he's won a medal, a prize, _and_ an award. That feeling comes back full-force when he opens his locker the next day to find a pair of wooden knitting needles and three skeins of impossibly soft yarn in red, white, and blue accompanied by a handwritten note entreating Steve and his yarn to join her in the lounge at 1800 hours and “show me what you've got.”

 

*

 

Darcy's actually kind of nervous about her knitting “appointment” with Captain America—not date, _appointment_ , let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Because yeah, she's got eyes and he's hot as hell and it really, really seemed like he was flirting with her the other day, but! But he's a national treasure. And Darcy's never dated a clean-cut guy before. But mostly it really seems to her like he could use a friend right now, above and before anything else.

 

Not that he doesn't _have_ friends. All the Avengers seem to be getting along surprisingly well since Tony herded them into his territory after Shield went kablooie, what with “strength in adversity” and “bonding after betrayal,” etc. etc. But Steve's their Commander or whatever and that kind of power dynamic can get in the way of personal relationships, or so Darcy's freshman sociology professor would have her believe. Plus, there's the couple-bubble going on with Tony  & Pepper and Thor & Jane and some kind of introverted threeway happening with Bruce, the Other Guy & Science.

 

Darcy also knows that Steve and Natasha were getting to be unlikely pals before she hauled in brainwashed!Bucky the long-lost cyborg assassin for rehabilitation, but well, _yeah_. That's the Thing, isn't it?

 

It's weird, Darcy thinks, knowing so much heavy stuff about all these super-people and their super-problems as a result of the continued randomness of her proximity to the intergalactic hurly-burly thanks to Jane and their symbiotic Genius/Genius-wrangler relationship and the highly impractical nature of Darcy's freshly minted liberal arts degree. Darcy's not questioning her own awesomeness—just unsure of where, what and how to put it to best use. In the meantime, though, she gets to live in bizarre splendor in a fabulous city with a bunch of people who do inspiringly amazing things.

 

Still though, if Darcy _was_ the type of person to get lonely or suffer from ennui like a pretentious hipster, that might be happening of late. Sometimes. On occasion. A little bit. Maybe.

 

Hence, the knitting.

 

Knitting is good for the soul, Grandma Lewis always said. It is also good for the twitchy ADD tendencies of indentured lab monkeys, Darcy says. And hopefully symptoms of anxiety and frustration presenting in strapping, patriotic super-soldiers whose best friends have come back from the dead only to take their tea (vodka?) and sympathy from redheaded former Commie assassins instead of poor Standup Stevie.

 

Of course, this is not an entirely altruistic endeavor, Darcy is willing to admit. She misses her old knitting group and the companionable click-click of other people's needles. Also, the more boys who knit the better! And of course, yes, of course, Captain Rogers is easy on the eyes. Anyway.

 

But Darcy also knows that empathy is one of her strengths (even if tact is not), and so she'd like to try and reach out to Steve, though his fish-out-of-water situation beats hers exponentially and he does already have ex-military basketball bonding sessions with that Sam guy he met during that whole Hydra hoopla fugitive situation, but dudes can be weird—hang out all the time and have each others' backs but not really talk about their feelings. Not that she's expecting Steve to unload all his angst on her just because she bought him some really yummy Merino superwash or anything. Just...she's got a feeling about this. And it's good to have hobbies, even if you're an anachronistic superhero hotass.

 

*

 

By the time Darcy plops herself down on the appointed couch at the appointed time, Steve's already there and already several inches into a stripey garter stitch scarf.

 

“Hey there, soldier!” she chirps, “hand it over for inspection.”

 

Steve complies easily, passing his work into her grabby hands with a small smile. Darcy dutifully inspects, noting that despite the simplicity of the pattern, his stitches are tight and even. She looks up at him thoughtfully, still petting the soft, nubbly fabric with her fingertips.

 

“You really have done this before.”

 

“Yeah...” Steve replies slowly, rubbing the back of his neck in that delightfully “aw shucks” way. “Did you think I was lying?”

 

“No! Of course not,” Darcy babbles. “Just, you've got good stitch definition here.”

 

“It's nothing special.” He lifts a shoulder, humble.

 

“Yeah, it isn't complicated lacework or anything,” Darcy agrees, “but I think plain & simple gets underrated a lot of the time. I mean, this really shows off the yarn itself, and makes a nice nummy fabric that'll keep your neck warm. Form and function, you know?”

 

“Yeah,” Steve says, sounding like he's really listening to her, squeezing a lot of comprehension into that one filler word. He's staring at her face in an unsettlingly earnest way that makes Darcy feel simultaneously happy and embarrassed about her philosophical tangent. _omg, yarn = srs bzns!!!_

 

Before Darcy can muster up a reply, an unexpected Hawkeye ambles into the room and stops short.

 

“Uuuuuh,” he says, taking in Steve, Darcy, the couch, and the yarn in one quick glance. “I was thinking of watching something in here?”

 

Steve looks a little uncertain at the interruption, but not ashamed, for which Darcy silently gives him many points. Many.

 

“Well, we're having a Stitch and Bitch,” Darcy informs Clint. “Steve's the stitch and I'm the bitch.”

 

Clint barks a laugh at that, but Steve furrows his brow. “Darcy, you're not a...”

 

“Oh, I wasn't insulting myself. It's a thing—stitch and bitch groups—where people meet up in coffee shops and bars and things and chat it up with their knitting. Knitting's very hip now. And as for the 'bitch' thing, there's a feminist move to reclaim words that have been used to demean ladies who've got stuff to say and aggression to get out.”

 

“Preach!” Clint pumps his fist in the air when Darcy's done with her little speech. He smiles too, which she hasn't seen him do too much before. But then, duh, he's on the outside looking in regarding Operation Winter Soldier Rehab too.

 

Steve still looks like he's digesting what she said. “Knitting's 'hip,' now?” is what he finally says, air quotes included, which is so cute Darcy wants to squeeze herself around him like a koala on a eucalyptus tree.

 

“Yeah,” Darcy says around a smile. “All the yarn shops are full of tattooed girls and stuff.”

 

“Huh,” Steve opines. “When I was growing up, knitting was something you did if you wanted to wear socks. I mean, I probably did more of it than your average boy, but we were poor and I was sickly...”

 

Darcy's saved from having to come up with a fitting response to the Dickensian image Steve's called up by Clint clapping his hands together decidedly.

 

“So. I've got some arrowheads that could use sharpening, if you guys'll let me crash your craft circle. And Jarvis assures me he can zap _Firefly_ episodes onto that TV over there. That's on your list, right Cap?”

 

Steve nods. Darcy starts rustling through her knitting bag. 

 

For his part, Jarvis simply notes, “Shiny.”

 

“You'll get that reference soon,” Darcy tells Steve, patting his tree-trunk thigh as he sits back down with his scarf-to-be. 

 

“Okay,” he says, looking bemused. It's a good look on him, Darcy thinks.

 

While Clint's off fetching his sharp and pointy toys, Steve leans over and whispers in Darcy's ear, eliciting entirely involuntary shivers down her spine.  _Friendly_ shivers. “I gotta tell you the truth. I started this thing and tore it out a couple times earlier before I got the tension right. My hands are bigger than they used to be.”

 

“Oh,” Darcy whispers back. “Right.”

 

“I wanted to get the hang of it back before I saw you today. I...wanted to impress you.” 

 

Darcy searches his face in the wake of this fantastic declaration and sees that Steve—super-soldier Steve—is being totally honest about this. But a certain glint in his eye suggests he's also laughing at himself a bit on the inside.

 

She's _totally_ impressed.

 

*

 


End file.
